Thumbelina

Thumbelina formats and manages USB sticks for three jobs: live ISO toolkits, thin installed Linux systems, or both on one drive when capacity allows.

Unlike Ventoy-style ISO-only tools, installed mode places full distros in Btrfs subvolumes (shared free space, optional zstd compression, snapshots). Every mode still presents a branded exFAT volume in Windows File Explorer so the stick is identifiable and, in live/both modes, accepts drag-and-drop ISOs.

Host capabilities

Task Linux Windows

Format live-iso

Yes

Yes (PowerShell)

Format installed / both

Yes

Helper script → Linux live/VM (tmb helper-script)

Refresh GRUB / ISO menu

Yes

Yes (mounted volumes)

Bootstrap distro into subvolume

Yes (debootstrap / pacstrap / dnf / tar)

Via Linux helper / VM